Oakham man charged after neighbor's dog shot with arrow

Kim Ring, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

Published Saturday November 9, 2013 at 6:00 am

PHOTO/ SUBMITTED PHOTO

Oboe the dog was seriously injured when a neighbor allegedly shot him with an arrow.

EAST BROOKFIELD — An Oakham man was ordered by a judge on Friday to surrender all of his hunting equipment and his hunting license after allegedly shooting and wounding his neighbor's dog with an arrow Oct. 23.

Byron Carpenter, 36, of 1909 North Brookfield Road, allegedly told environmental police he knew that he shot at a dog and "ran out of the area because he panicked," a police report states.

But in a written statement, Mr. Carpenter stated he was coming out of the woods behind his house when some dogs came at him and he thought they might be coyotes so he shot once at a shadow in the darkness.

The dog, a black-and-white border collie-labrador retriever mix, was found on the back step of its home after the owner heard barking about 6 p.m. The dog was bleeding and was taken to the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University in Grafton.

A veterinarian there wrote that "Oboe" the dog suffered "deficits in his forelimb" and had undergone two surgeries as of Oct. 30. While an amputation was not needed, there are still several risks to the dog who "has a long road of recovery ahead of him," Dr. Harpreet Singh wrote.

Police were called by the dog's owners after the incident. The owners showed officers a trail of blood on their property that they had marked with orange flags. They also showed police an arrow, with blood and hair on it, that was lodged into the root of a tree also on their property, the police report states.

The informant allegedly said Mr. Carpenter knew he had shot the neighbor's dog and did so "knowing it was a dog and (he) was mostly just sick and tired of hearing the dogs bark and dealing with them."

The report states that Mr. Carpenter later verbally verified the informant's account, though his written statement differs, and he also confirmed the arrow found in the tree root was the one he used to shoot the dog.

Mr. Carpenter was arraigned Friday on charges of discharging a firearm within 500 feet of a residence, causing property damage with a hunting weapon and maiming an animal.

At the request of Assistant District Attorney Anthony Melia, Judge Jennifer Ginsburg ordered Mr. Carpenter to surrender his bows, arrows, hunting license and other hunting equipment. He was released on personal recognizance and will be back in court Jan. 14 for a pretrial hearing.

Contact Kim Ring at kim.ring@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @kimmring.